Osborne Hands Greater Power to Bank of England to Prevent Housing Market Crash

THE GUARDIAN – George Osborne is to give the Bank of England sweeping new powers to control the size of mortgages amid fears that rapidly rising house prices risk becoming a bubble that would threaten Britain’s economic recovery.

Measures announced to the City give Threadneedle Street the ability to impose direct curbs on the property market for the first time since the deregulation of the 1980s abolished queues for home loans.

The moves by the Treasury to limit the amount of money people can borrow are an attempt to avoid damaging the entire economy with an increase in interest rates – something the governor of the Bank, Mark Carney, warned on Thursday could happen before the end of the year.